How was the immigration of Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa supposed to benefit an average Coloradan?

by philg

According to Wikipedia, Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa immigrated to the U.S. in 2002, complained that non-Muslims were unreasonably subject to “Islamophobia”, and killed 10 of his fellow Americans in a Boulder, Colorado supermarket in 2021.

Why did it make sense to admit Mr. Al-Issa as an immigrant in 2002? Housing in Colorado already cost more than Coloradans could afford: “Denver originally adopted an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance (IHO) in 2002, requiring for-sale developers building more than 30 units to set aside 10% as affordable to moderate-income households” (denvergov.org). Mr. Al-Issa would require 13 years of K-12 school, nominally costing taxpayers roughly $130,000, but the headline “per-pupil spending” numbers don’t include capital costs, e.g., for school construction. Arvada, Colorado, where Mr. Al-Issa lived, was considered to have “overcrowded” schools and therefore taxpayers also had to work extra hours to pay for new school buildings. Taxpayers without children would have had to pay for various tax credits and other government subsidies that are provided to non-welfare parents in the U.S. So let’s say that the expected cost would have been at least $250,000 by the time Mr. Al-Issa reached age 18.

At this point, would we have expected Mr. Al-Issa to earn more than a median income? Presumably that is the best assumption about someone for whom minimal information is available. We can expect the average person to be average. But already in 2002 the average (median earner) person in Colorado couldn’t afford the basics of life (housing, health insurance, etc.) without a government-run program of assistance, such as the above-mentioned affordable housing scheme.

For a working class taxpayer, wouldn’t Mr. Al-Issa’s presence in the U.S. have led to higher rents (more competition for scarce housing), worse traffic (if Mr. Al-Issa had gotten a job and commuted to work), and higher taxes (to pay for the subsidies that a median earner would require).

Maybe Mr. Al-Issa’s immigration could benefit the Colorado elites, as pointed out by Harvard professor George Borjas. A Colorado owner of apartment buildings or real estate could benefit from a larger population generating demand for housing. An upper-income Coloradan could benefit from the availability of labor at lower prices due to Mr. Al-Issa offering his services, e.g., as an Uber driver. A Colorado government worker, e.g., teacher, police officer, prison official, firefighter, or bureaucrat, could benefit from a larger population and resulting increased hiring by the government, thus generating opportunities for promotion.

But how did the elites sell so many non-elites on this kind of immigration? (55 percent of Coloradans voted for Joe Biden and therefore additional low-skill immigration)

(Separately, what will taxpayers spend to prosecute and imprison Mr. Al-Issa? Colorado has no death penalty. Mr. Al-Issa could easily live to 100, so that’s 79 years of incarceration, state-funded prison health care, etc.)

Readers: If Mr. Al-Issa hadn’t committed 10 murders, but instead had turned out to be a median wage earner, how would that have made the other median wage earners in Colorado better off?

(At first glance the above seems like a stupid question. The best expectation for a native-born baby is that he/she/ze/they will become a median earner. We don’t say that we’re worse off when a baby is born within our own family, right? The difference is that parents experience a lot of joy from having their own children in the house (except for, at worst, 95 percent of the time!). We value our children even if they never earn a dime, which would offset to some extent the loss to other taxpayers from having to support our children in means-tested housing, on means-tested health insurance, and shopping for food via EBT/SNAP.)

From a 2018 trip to Colorado, where stores began selling marijuana in 2014…

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Short Snowflake?

by philg

Snowflake (SNOW) is valued at $62 billion and had 2020 revenue of $265 million with losses of $348 million (i.e., they lost more than 100 percent of revenue!). The company was at one time worth more than IBM (now at $120 billion).

How can a startup data warehousing company be worth a substantial fraction of Oracle’s $200 billion market cap? Oracle’s 2020 revenue (admittedly flat compared to 2019) was $39 billion with $10 billion in profit. Data warehousing is a small fraction of Oracle’s business; the company competes with SAP in the ERP market and sells its core RDBMS for transaction processing. Data warehousing is sometimes useful, but if a company’s Oracle systems were shut down the company wouldn’t be able to take orders, manufacture widgets, pay employees, pay vendors, etc. The actual operation of a business (which is what Oracle supports) has to be worth way more than sifting through data to learn that customers buy more alcohol after they’ve been locked down by state governors (what you can learn in a data warehouse).

Snowflake says that they’re doing something exciting layered on top of Amazon Web Services, but what if a lot of their customers are motivated by the fact that Snowflake is selling services to them at a loss? If Snowflake buys storage and computer from Amazon, then marks it down by 30 percent, plainly it is better to buy from Snowflake until and unless the party with investors’ money ends.

This guy liked Snowflake in 2018, but notes that it competes with a native Amazon offering: Redshift. The Gartner folks picked traditional data warehousing leader Teradata as superior to Snowflake in four out of four use cases. This mid-2020 comparison shows that AWS Redshift has substantially more customers, but Snowflake is growing rapidly:

The author does not come out strongly in favor of Brand A, G, or S:

Ultimately, in the world of cloud-based data warehouses, Redshift, BigQuery and Snowflake are similar in that they provide the scale and cost savings of a cloud solution. The main difference you will likely want to consider is the way that the services are billed, especially in terms of how this billing style will work out with your style of workflow. If you have very large data, but a spiky workload (i.e. you’re running lots of queries occasionally, with high idle time), BigQuery will probably be cheaper and easier for you. If you have a steadier, more continuous usage pattern when it comes to queries and the data you’re working with, it may be more cost-effective to go with Snowflake, since you’ll be able to cram more queries into the hours you’re paying for. Or if you have system engineers to tune the infrastructure according to your needs Redshift might just give you the flexibility to do so.

If “the main difference … is the way that the services are billed,” how can Snowflake be worth $60+ billion? Amazon and/or Google could simply change the way that they bill their services.

Readers: What am I missing? I hate to think that markets are wrong, but I can’t figure out how SNOW is worth $60 billion. In our current bubble, the average P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is 40 (15 is normal and Oracle is only at 17 right now). So SNOW would need $1.5 billion in annual profit to justify its current market cap. If the company settles in at Oracle’s fabulous 25 percent profitability, that would correspond to $6 billion in required revenue. Teradata (TDC), after 42 years in this business, has annual revenues of $1.83 billion, with profits of only $129 million. TDC’s market cap is $4.2 billion. If SNOW has not come up with new and better algorithms for analyzing data, how can they be worth more than the database warehousing businesses of IBM, Oracle, Teradata, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google combined?

Happy April Fools’ Day again and remember that nobody is more foolish than an investor in a bull market! (Also remember that nearly all of my investment instincts, including refraining from buying Bitcoin, have proved to be wrong!)

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Is the Passover story the original false victimhood narrative?

by philg

It’s still Passover and I hope that readers of the Jewish persuasion are enjoying their matzot! Nothing like a week of Matzah to make you appreciate Wonder Bread.

It’s also April Fools’ Day, in which we celebrate the credulous.

What if we combine these celebrations? Wikipedia:

The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of the Israelites. There is no indication that the Israelites ever lived in Ancient Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula shows almost no sign of any occupation for the entire 2nd millennium BCE (even Kadesh-Barnea, where the Israelites are said to have spent 38 years, was uninhabited prior to the establishment of the Israelite monarchy). In contrast to the absence of evidence for the Egyptian captivity and wilderness wanderings, there are ample signs of Israel’s evolution within Canaan from native Canaanite roots. …

The biblical narrative contains some details which are authentically Egyptian, but such details are scant, and the story frequently does not reflect Egypt of the Late Bronze Age or even Egypt at all (it is unlikely, for example, that a mother would place a baby in the reeds of the Nile, where it would be in danger from crocodiles). Such elements of the narrative as can be fitted into the 2nd millennium could equally belong to the 1st, consistent with a 1st millennium BCE writer trying to set an old story in Egypt. (The name of Moses, for example, belongs to 1st millennium Egyptian, and would have been Mase in the 2nd).

A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness.

We Jews say that we were enslaved and forced to labor for the Egyptians, whose pay records of voluntary laborers (farmers in the off season) are well-preserved and for whom “slavery” meant subjecting non-Egyptians to a 20 percent income tax. We Jews say that we weren’t permitted to leave Egypt, but there is no record of Ancient Egypt having any controls or restrictions on emigration (as the richest and most advanced civilization in the region, why would substantial numbers of people have wanted to leave it?).

When proffering a tale of victimhood, details add credibility. Example from a Haggadah:

This Pharaoh made the Israelites slaves. He forced them to do hard labor, building cities with bricks made from clay and straw. The people knew neither peace nor rest, only misery and pain. The cruelest decree of all was Pharaoh’s order that every baby boy born to an Israelite woman be drowned in the River Nile.

In contemporary western nations, where the most valuable coin is victimhood, should Jews be credited with having developed the first false victimhood narrative?

And what about a contemporary victimhood narrative that is fit for April Fools’ Day? On a collective basis, maybe immigrants to the U.S. could get the prize. From “Immigrants May Be Fed False Stories to Bolster Asylum Pleas” (New York Times, 2011):

Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser said in her 2004 asylum bid that she was gang-raped, and that soldiers destroyed her home, beating her and her husband, who she said died in jail. She recently admitted to prosecutors that she had been lying. Her lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, said she was desperate to leave Guinea, and had been encouraged to exaggerate her claims. She told Manhattan prosecutors that a man had given her a recording of the asylum story to memorize.

Whether here legally or illegally, immigrants can apply for asylum within one year of arriving. To qualify, they must show a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group — which could cover gays or abused women.

Immigration courts across the country granted 51 percent of asylum claims last year, government statistics show. Such courts in New York City, which heard more cases than in any other city, approved 76 percent, among the highest rate in the nation.

How about in the individual category? For fans of the TV show The Good Place, the actor Jameela Jamil should be a candidate. Insects are three of the ten plagues in Exodus: lice, flies, and locusts; from Wikipedia:

In interviews, Jamil has mentioned several bee attacks in her life, including being hit by a car at age 17 when running away from a bee. In 2015, Jameela claimed that while she was interviewing musician Mark Ronson in the Hollywood Hills, the ‘biggest swarm of killer bees’ she had ever seen made them retreat. Ronson contradicted Jamil’s version of events, describing ‘one or two individual bees’ and walking ‘slowly inside’ in response. Jamil related that while filming the first season of The Good Place in 2016, she was chased by a dark swarm of bees and again got hit by a car. In 2019, Jamil states she ran away from bees while crossing the road to the UN headquarters to give a speech.

(see the “bee on my arm” at about 1:15 into the “Solar Panel Guy” recording at jollyrogertelephone.com)

Exodus talks about boils. Jamil:

In 2015, Jamil mentioned that she left the BBC Radio 1 Official Chart Show because of a breast cancer scare in 2014, and had lumpectomies on both breasts, in which she says she lost a ‘large chunk’ of breast tissue. However, in the 3 October 2019 Hardtalk interview, she concurs with the interviewer that she had a breast cancer scare ‘in 2016’, and that this precipitated an immediate move to Los Angeles after ‘a week’ waiting for test results that showed it to be a single ‘benign lump’.[105] Separately in a segment recorded in 2016 for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer, she instead describes having ‘recently’ experienced ‘a lump in her breast that showed signs of precancerous cells’. Also in October 2019 in the same month as the HardTalk interview but not in the interview itself, she stated she suffered from actual cancer twice, having cervical cancer in 2016 and 2019.

In 2020, a social media user accused Jamil of having Munchausen syndrome and falsifying or exaggerating specific public claims of health issues. For instance, Jamil claimed to have had a peanut allergy at birth and had recently posted an image of a peanut snack, ….

What if you search for “children’s haggadah”? One of the first results is from JewishBoston. The document fails to disclose that the Ancient Egyptians who purportedly oppressed the Jews are not the same people (except for a few Copts who have survived) as the people who live in Egypt today (i.e., even if we believe the story we should not hold a grudge against a modern person who says “I am Egyptian.”). It also fails to disclose that scholars doubt the historicity of the tale and that the Ancient Egyptians may not have been bad people. So the false victimhood narrative lives on!

(Separately, this Haggadah devotes roughly 1/10th of a page to telling us that “Nearly 50 Million Americans suffer the oppression of hunger.” So… our neighbors are starving. By contrast, “feminism and women’s rights … gay and lesbian Jews … spit out the seeds in their orange segment to reject homophobia and hatred” is a full page story:

More about the Good Orange Woman from the Jewish Women’s Archive.)

Whether or not you’ve Jewish… Happy April Fools’ Day!

Related, from the Labor Seder put on by a temple in Falls Church, Virginia (median household income $125,000 per year):

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We ran but could not hide: U.S. deaths in 2020 were 16 percent higher than in 2019

by philg

TLDR: If we denied children a year of school and spent $trillions, shouldn’t we have something to show for that?

The CDC sped up its tally of deaths in 2020 and now says that American deaths in 2020 were 16 percent higher than in 2019 (CNBC). COVID-19 is now highlighted as the third leading cause of death. If we adjust for U.S. population growth (somewhat difficult to assess because of the undocumented), that’s perhaps a 15 percent higher death rate.

Considering the loss of a year of education for American children, the loss of liberty for American adults, and $trillions in tax dollars flushed down the toilet, this seems like a spectacular failure. While our state governors issued orders to residents and Americans waited for Dr. Fauci to tell them whether it was safe to roast a turkey, Sweden continued to live within its existing framework of laws and customs, e.g., sending children to school, adults to the gym and social life, etc. Swedes did not don the hijab of the Church of Shutdown for hours each day. Sweden ended up with 10 percent more deaths than in 2019 (Statista; note that 2019 seems to have been an unusually death-free year in Sweden and also that, due to population growth, the 2020 death rate was, in fact, lower than the death rate in 2010). Sweden also has a growing population, so a total higher than 10 percent might translate to a rate that is 9 percent higher.

Also from the CNBC article:

It typically takes researchers 11 months after the end of the calendar year to investigate “certain causes of death and to process and review data.” While the daily total Covid death figures reported by the CDC are timely, they can underestimate the actual number of deaths because of “incomplete or delayed reporting.”

For those who believe that humans are in charge of the coronavirus, I imagine that the take-away from these data will be to double down on shutdowns and masks. The assumption will be that, absent our heroic sacrifices, deaths in the U.S. would have been 300 percent higher in 2020 than in 2019, so holding the increase to only 16 percent demonstrates how effective shutdowns and masks are. That masked-and-locked California and wide-open Florida are right next to each other in states ranked by Covid-19 death rate (

) will not be cause to question the assumption that masks and lockdowns are highly effective. (Note that California’s COVID-19 death rate is substantially higher than Florida’s if you consider the over-65 population that is actually vulnerable to COVID-19. Florida has roughly 50% more seniors as a percentage of its population.)

Finally, let’s not forget that our 2020 aggregate deaths also include deaths caused by the shutdown, e.g., people who didn’t get the cardiology procedures that they would have had, extra drug overdoses, etc.

Readers who love masks and shutdowns: Given that deaths in 2020 were 16 percent higher than in 2019, how many American lives do you think were actually “saved” compared to if state governors and local government had done nothing (so we’d still have had Trump funding the vaccines, the CDC messing up initial testing, etc., but there would have been no shutdowns, no masks, and kids would have been in school; we still would have had media hysteria, so presumably a lot of the elderly/vulnerable and elite would have hidden in bunkers voluntarily). We’re fatter than the Swedes and COVID-19 loves to kill the fat, but plenty of Swedes are also overweight. (But don’t count the 20 lbs. that people gained during the year that their governors ordered them to spend next to the fridge!)

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Impending Coronadoom for Minnesota, forecast versus reality

by philg

Americans are currently living under a forecast of “impending doom” from our CDC Director. Let’s review how folks in Minnesota reacted when their doom was forecast by scientists.

From March 25, 2020, “Governor Walz Issues Stay at Home Order for Minnesotans”:

Modeling released today by the Minnesota Department of Health and University of Minnesota predicts that more than 70,000 Minnesotans could die from COVID-19 if we take no action. The Governor’s two-week order to stay home is forecasted to significantly slow the spread of COVID-19 and allow the state time to make key preparations for the pandemic.

14 days to flatten the curve!

A year later, Matt Malkus looked at this.

Over the past 12 months, nearly 7,000 people in Minnesota actually did die with or from COVID-19, 0.12 percent of the estimated 5.7 million population (though not even Yale knows how many undocumented Americans live in America). So if we believe the model estimate of 70,000 dead, we could say that the cower-in-place keep-schools-closed-for-a-year strategy worked! How does the 0.12 percent death rate compare to what happened in give-the-finger-to-the-virus Sweden, from which many Minnesotans can trace their ancestry? This list of countries by COVID-19 death rate puts Sweden at a 0.13 percent COVID death rate (Sweden automatically tags anyone with a positive PCR test as a “COVID death”).

(As in Massachusetts, Minnesota does not include deaths by age or age group on their dashboard. Only “cases” are published and therefore a reader is left with the impression that COVID-19 primarily afflicts young and middle-aged Minnesotans:

if you had to guess the median age of a COVID-19 death from this chart you might pick 38 (it was 82 in Massachusetts before the data were pulled from the dashboard). Where Minnesota provides comprehensive charts, though, is in “COVID-19 Data by Race/Ethnicity”:

COVID-19 is exposing what has always been true: racism is pervasive and persistent. … We know that communities of color and Indigenous communities don’t need data to verify their experience. … In developing the dashboard, we knew it was important to provide descriptions that accompany the data to provide context so that false information and misunderstandings do not perpetrate harmful rhetoric and racial disparities.

For those prejudiced whites who might try to avoid their Latinx brothers, sisters, and binary resisters as carriers of disease… the Minnesota government anti-racism specialists helpfully explain that “Latinx Minnesotans are testing positive for COVID-19 at nearly 3 times the rate of white Minnesotans.”)

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Were coronalockdowns good preparation for sending humans to Mars?

by philg

In the dark BC age it was thought that human psychology presented a significant barrier to human exploration of Mars. Humans were social animals who could never tolerate being locked into a small space for seven months, unable to venture out into a hostile and dangerous environment.

But, thanks to young people having meekly surrendered what had previously been considered liberties, we can now draw from a pool of tens of millions of people who spent an entire year in a tiny apartment, often entirely alone, either unable to venture outside or afraid to do so. Perhaps some of them suffered reduced mental health from being sedentary and watching a screen 24/7. But for those who sailed through… this is the ideal pool from which to draw candidates for a Mars mission, no?

The red planet:

(okay, it’s Jordan, 2012, and now apparently open for visitors)

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CDC Director: Impending Doom for the mostly-vaccinated U.S.

by philg

From state-sponsored media (NPR) yesterday, “CDC Director Fears ‘Impending Doom’ If U.S. Opens Too Quickly”:

In an emotional plea during the White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing on Monday, the CDC chief, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, described a feeling of “impending doom.”

The cause of her concern? A rising number of coronavirus cases in the United States. The most recent seven-day average is just below 60,000 cases per day – a 10% increase compared with the previous week.

Hospitalizations are up, too: about 4,800 admissions per day over the last week, up from an average 4,600 per day in the previous seven-day period. And deaths, which tend to lag cases and hospitalizations, have also begun to rise: increasing nearly 3%, to a seven-day average of about 1,000 per day.

I wonder which states she could be talking about?

“We’re in the life and death race with a virus that is spreading quickly, with cases rising again,” Biden said at the White House on Monday afternoon. “New variants are spreading and sadly some of the reckless behavior we’ve seen on television over the past few weeks means more cases are to come in the weeks ahead.”

Our greatest scientist:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, agreed. “If we open up completely now, that is premature, given the level of infection” currently seen in the U.S., Fauci said. He added that even as the warm weather gives us the urge “to just cut loose, we’ve just got to hang in there a bit longer.” The likely reason for the uptick in cases, he said, is that states are opening up too quickly.

At first glance, a forecast of impending doom makes sense. However bad things were in the past, they can only get worse. Sweden gave the finger to the coronavirus and now only 99.87 percent of Swedes remain alive (see also Sweden will have a lower death rate in 2020 than it had in 2010). But the virus that killed 0.13 percent of Swedes attacked a population that was initially uninfected and unvaccinated. The doomsayer’s own agency estimates that roughly half of Americans have already had COVID-19. And the NPR article says that most of the Americans who are potentially vulnerable to dying from COVID-19 have already been vaccinated:

Among seniors, 73% have now received at least their first dose. Among all U.S. adults, 36% have received at least one dose. And more than 50 million Americans – nearly one in five adults — are fully vaccinated.

The CDC says that the vaccines are 90 percent effective (new paper). The CDC says that COVID-19 is “involved” in deaths primarily among those 65 and over:

(Biology students should note that #Science says it is “All Sexes” and not “Both Sexes”.)

How do we combine all of the above into “impending doom”? We have immunity from infection + immunity among the older/vulnerable from vaccines + #science saying that vaccines are 90% effective = doom.

Less dramatically, how can all of the above combine to yield the rising hospitalization and death rates described in the article?

Related… the CDC itself says that the vaccines don’t work well enough to exempt the vaccinated from COVID-19 testing on returning to the U.S.:

(Maybe the fear of letting a vaccinated, yet COVID-19-positive, person into a country that has more than 60,000 new “cases” (positive PCR tests) is that the traveler will bring a radical variant to our shores? But if the variant is truly radical, wouldn’t a standard PCR test come back negative anyway?)

And from our science-following leader, “Biden Pushes Mask Mandate as C.D.C. Director Warns of ‘Impending Doom’” (NYT):

President Biden, facing a rise in coronavirus cases around the country, called on Monday for governors and mayors to reinstate mask mandates as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of “impending doom” from a potential fourth surge of the pandemic.

Masks worked for the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Slovakia, so they will make all the difference here…

If the forecast of “doom” has you rethinking your migration-via-Cirrus-or-Bonanza… “Psaki: Biden, Harris fly private, don’t need to follow CDC travel suggestions” (New York Post, yesterday):

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris don’t need to worry about flouting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations against nonessential travel, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

The reason: They both fly private.

Psaki made the comments after being asked at her daily press briefing about the commander-in-chief’s recent trips amid continued advisories from the health agency against traveling — even if fully vaccinated.

“I would say that the president travels, as does the vice president, on a private plane. That is the purview of every president and vice president throughout American history,” the press secretary said of Air Force One and Two.

So it is a pretty bad doom, but it likely won’t be bad for those who fly private! (see The social justice of coronashutdowns)

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Would limiting charitable deductions raise more than a wealth tax?

by philg

“President Biden not ruling out wealth tax and believes rich aren’t paying enough, White House says” (USA Todaym March 15):

Warren, who campaigned for president on a platform including a wealth tax, introduced an “ultra-millionaire tax” in her legislation. The tax would impose a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts between $50 million and $1 billion and another 1% surtax on any wealth above $1 billion.

In contrast to income taxes, which are applied to a person’s individual earnings or an entity’s profits, a wealth tax charges an amount from the value of given assets. Progressive economists have long argued for a wealth tax as a means of combating wealth inequality and other ills.

We already have a few wealth taxes, though. One is property tax, which is almost impossible to get out of. The second is capital gains tax, which actually functions as a wealth tax because it isn’t indexed to inflation. Any time someone sells a long-held asset, some of the original value will be taxed away due to the fact that even an asset whose value falls will usually appreciate in nominal terms. The third is estate (inheritance) tax. The super rich generally escape both capital gains and estate taxes by putting money into their pet foundations. Most of Bill Gates’s personal profits from Microsoft will never be taxed, for example, because he puts appreciated Microsoft stock into the Gates Foundation and from there the money can go straight to Africa without the U.S. Treasury getting a rake.

What if Warren Buffett and Bill Gates could still carry out their charitable goals, but had to sell appreciated assets and pay capital gains tax before donating the resulting cash? In California, for example, at least one third of the money would end up in the hands of state and federal government (the other two-thirds can then be sent to Africa!).

Readers: What do you think would raise more money for the U.S. government (now $2 trillion (about 10% of GDP) larger than before and therefore occupying as large a role in our economy as the most lavishly funded European governments (but without providing the free education, free health care, and other good stuff that the European governments provide)), Warren’s wealth tax or eliminating the ability of billionaires to stuff what would have been taxable $billions into foundations?

Once implemented, would President Harris keep the wealth tax at 2-3%? From The Last Castle:

In 1909, President Taft suggested a tax on income. In July 1909, the Sixteenth Amendment passed but four years elapsed before Wyoming became the thirty-sixth state to ratify it. On February 3, 1913, it became law. Its first full year in effect was 1914, the same year of George [Vanderbilt]’s unexpected death.

Later that year, the government levied a 1 percent tax on net personal income in excess of $3,000 annually, and a 6 percent surtax on income that exceeded $500,000.

Note that the $500,000 threshold is equivalent to roughly $13 million in today’s mini-dollars. I.e., if the rates had stayed where they were when proposed, anyone earning under $13 million/year today would pay at most 1 percent income tax and those earning less than $80,000/year would pay nothing.

A fishing boat in Dar es Salaam (2008) that could use some paint, but I’m not sure that the Gates Foundation has delivered…

Related:

  • “MacKenzie Scott Announces $4.2 Billion More in Charitable Giving” (New York Times): “In her short career as one of the world’s leading philanthropists, MacKenzie Scott has made a mark through the enormous scale of her giving and also through its speed, donating nearly $6 billion of her fortune this year alone.” (Also a good example of how much more lucrative it is to have sex with the boss than to continue working as an admin assistant.) Washington State has no income tax, but this would have yielded 23.8 percent (20 percent capital gains; 3.8 percent Obamacare tax) = $1.428 billion for the federal government.
  • “Biden has promised not to raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000. Here’s what he might push for instead” (CNBC): She clarified on Wednesday that the $400,000 threshold applies to families, not individuals. Consequently, individuals who make $200,000 could be affected if they are married to someone who earns that same amount, for example.
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The Ever Given’s interaction with the Suez Canal

by philg

“The bank effect and the big boat blocking the Suez” (FT, mostly paywalled, but the link might work because I’ve included a Facebook ID) is interesting and reveals some similarities to Queen Elizabeth 2‘s grounding off Cape Cod, in which the ship dug a 9′ hole in the water by traveling at 25 knots. Some excerpts:

The canal has been getting wider and deeper over time…

But it is not so wide/deep that displaced water can be ignored.

Is it time to read Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal? (Remember that the Pharaohs who purportedly oppressed the Jews built this first!)

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A year of face masks in Slovenia

by philg

Today is the one-year anniversary of the Slovenian government ordering residents to wear face masks. From Wikipedia:

From 29 March, wearing a face mask, even one made at home, or equivalents such as scarves that cover the mouth and nose, is mandatory along with protective gloves; the decree stipulates that masks and gloves need to be worn in indoor public spaces. As of 15 October 2020 face masks or equivalent face coverings are required everywhere in public spaces (including outdoors) for any of the statistical regions designated as “red” (more than 140 confirmed infected per 100k population)

American say-gooders had good things to say about Slovenia. From Vox, May 5, 2020:

It seems like some countries have figured out not only how to flatten their coronavirus curves, but also how to send them plunging downward. From Slovenia to Jordan to Iceland, governments took early action to impose lockdowns, test and trace thousands of people, isolate the sick, encourage social distancing and preventive measures like mask wearing, and communicate honestly with the public. In effect, they followed the prescribed playbook for such a pandemic, and — surprise, surprise — it worked.

(Note that the WHO’s prescribed playbook for a pandemic, prior to 2020, explicitly said “do not wear masks or close borders unless you’re an island”)

Its success mainly stems from an aggressive early lockdown, quarantines of sick people, and generous government spending.

What Slovenia has shown, then, is that aggressive government action and intervention can help keep people from spreading the disease. Even by the government’s own numbers, it could do more testing, but for now, the current measures appear to be working.

How has a year of science-informed “aggressive government action” worked out? Slovenia is #3 on the leaderboard of countries ranked by COVID-19 death rate. Only Belgium and the Czech Republic (masked since March 18, 2020) have had a larger percentage of the population killed by COVID-19.

Our government is impressed enough by these statistics to use our hard-earned tax dollars to buy Facebook ads. From March 16:

The Golf Hotel Mokrice Castle near Brežice:

Related:

  • Slovenian border barrier (folks in Slovenia follow science, but fail to recognize how much wealthier a country can become via low-skill migration)
  • Pipistrel, a world leader in aviation innovation (including electric airplanes), based in Slovenia
  • Melania Trump, the country’s most famous export
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